Hamza Alvi
{{Short description|Pakistani Marxist academic sociologist and activist}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}}
Hamza Alvi (10 April 1921 – 1 December 2003) was a Pakistani Marxist academic sociologist and activist.
Biography
Alavi was born in the Bohra community in Karachi, then in British India (the area is now in Pakistan) and migrated in adulthood to the UK.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/dec/19/guardianobituaries.race|title=Hamza Alavi|publisher=The Guardian.com |date=19 December 2003|access-date=16 November 2011}} The focus of his academic work was nationality, gender, fundamentalism and the peasantry. His most noted work was perhaps his 1965 essay Peasant And Revolution in the Socialist Register which stressed the militant role of the middle peasantry. These middle peasants were then viewed as the class in the rural areas which were most naturally the allies of the urban working class. In the 1960s he was one of the co-founders of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.{{cite web |url=http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_13-12-2003_pg3_2 |title=Daily Times - Site Edition |website=www.dailytimes.com.pk |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040928032747/http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_13-12-2003_pg3_2 |archive-date=2004-09-28}} Brass, Tom (2004) Hamza Alavi (1921–2003) Journal of Peasant Studies, 1743-9361, Volume 31, Issue 2, Pages 341 – 344
He believed that a “salary-dependent class of Muslim government servants, called the ‘salariat’ led the movement of an independent state for Muslims in the subcontinent as they saw a decrease in their share of jobs in pre-partition India.{{Cite web|url=http://www.dawn.com/news/1176770|title = Evolving political structures according to Hamza Alavi|date = 19 April 2015}} which finally resulted in the creation of Pakistan. He used the concept of "Colonial Mode of Production" in Indian agriculture, which is different from feudal and capitalist mode.{{Cite journal|date=2015-06-05|title=India and the Colonial Mode of Production|url=https://www.epw.in/journal/2014/32/glimpses-past-web-exclusives/india-and-colonial-mode-production.html|journal=Economic and Political Weekly|language=en|pages=7–8}}
Selected publications
His publications include:{{Cite journal|date=1965|title=The White Paper: A Spur to Racialism|journal=CARD}}
- Jagirdari or Samraaj, fiction house Lhr (Urdu)
- Takhleq-e-Pakistan, Fiction House Lhr (Urdu)
- Pakistan Ek Riasat ka Bohraan, Fiction House Lhr (Urdu)
- Alavi, Hamza (1965) Peasant and Revolution, Socialist Register, pp. 241–77
- Alvi, Hamza & Shanin, Teodor (1982) Introduction to the Sociology of "Developing Societies", Monthly Review PressR S Pannu (1985) Review of Introduction to the Sociology of 'Developing Societies' by Hamza Alavi; Teodor Shanin, Third World Quarterly, Jan., vol. 7, no. 1, p. 162-164
- Alavi, H. (1982). Capitalism and colonial production. London: Croom Helm.
- Alvi, H., & Harriss, J. (1989). South Asia. New York: Monthly Review Press.
- Alvi, H., & Harriss, J. (1989). Sociology of 'developing societies': South Asia. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
- Halliday, Fred & Alavi, Hamza (1988) State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan, Monthly Review Press
References
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Category:Development specialists
Category:Pakistani social scientists
Category:British writers of Pakistani descent
Category:Pakistani sociologists
Category:Pakistani emigrants to the United Kingdom